Fred Klein, the former sports columnist of the Wall Street Journal, gives his take on the current sports scene, among other things.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

BATTLEBALL

My
first paying job in journalism was at age 19 with the Champaign-Urbana Courier
in the home cities of the University of Illinois, where I was a student. I
received $1.25 an hour to cover the Champaign High School teams. I felt myself
richly rewarded, the sum being more than adequate to pay for gas for my ‘53
Ford, movies and almost-nightly trips to the Chuck Wagon, my diner of choice.
Life was good.

One of
my first “enterprise” features came in 1958, my second year on the job. In a football
game that season, a player on the CHS team kicked a field goal, about a
20-yarder. The feat was so unusual I asked around to see if anyone could remember
the last time it had been done locally. No one could with certainty. I searched
the paper’s ragged files and found that a field goal had been kicked against
the school four or five years earlier but that no Champaign lad had done it
during that period. I already knew that even kicked points-after-touchdown were
rare at the high-school level, so using the FG as a point of departure my piece
investigated the sad state of the placekicking art. I recall it being well
received.

Of late,
of course, every decent-sized high school has a good kicker, and the specialty
has blossomed fully in the colleges and pros. Indeed, one of football’s seminal
events was the day in 1961 that a young Pete Gogolak kicked a 41-yard field
goal for Cornell University using the “soccer-style” movement he’d learned on
the pitches of his native Hungary. By
adding hip torque to leg strength, the technique vastly increased kickers’ range
and accuracy. Its later development by Gogolak and others at the pro level
revolutionized the game.

Now a
counter-revolution is stirring, led by the National Football League
Commissioner Roger Goodell, of all people. As last season wound down he noted
aloud that kicked points-after-touchdown in the league had become so
monotonously successful that they might better be eliminated, replaced by the
awarding of seven points for a TD or giving the scoring team the option of
going for two points with a play from scrimmage while forfeiting a point for
failure. Since the commish’s musings are taken as seriously as Chairman Mao’s
once were, league officials can be expected to consider the change before next
season commences.

To that
I say fine, but why stop at examining just extra points? I’ve long held that
football would be a better game without the foot, one with no kicking at all,
punting as well as placekicking. You could start each game by putting the ball
at midfield, lining up a player from each team on the 40s and letting them race
and claw for possession. The winner’s team would possess the spheroid until it
goes four-downs-and-out or scores a touchdown. Then the other guys would give
it a go from the point of surrender or from its own 30-yard line after a TD,
back and forth until time expires, with the usual quarter- and half-time breaks.

Extra
points would be regular plays from the 2 1/2-yard line, just like they’re
sometimes done now. Field goals are copouts and dull to boot (they’re either
good or they’re not), and no big loss. No punting would enhance the importance
of every play and make fourth-down plays—the game’s most exciting—more
frequent. With no way out under the
rules, coaches would have to shed the play-calling conservatism that soddens
the present-day game. It’d be a true 100-yard war without quarter. Call it
“Battleball” and let the boys go at it!

I’m
sure your eyes are rolling by now, but steady them if you can. If eliminating
kicked extra points is justifiable by their frequency of success (99.something%
in recent years), field goals haven’t been far behind. In the years immediately before 1974, when NFL goal post were placed at the back of
the end zone and their widths narrowed to 18 ½ feet, field goals were good
roughly 50% of the time. Now the overall success rate is at about 85% and
climbing.

Field goals of 50 yards or more
were rare in the 1960s and ‘70s but last season they were good about 65% of the
time. Six of the 14 NFL FGs of 60-yards or more were kicked in the last three
seasons, including Matt Prater’s 2013 record 64-yarder. At the rate things are
going, any team that reaches midfield soon will be in scoring range, offering
reward for slight achievement. Is this the sort of lesson we should be teaching
our children?

NFL kickoffs already have come in for
deemphasis, with player safety the objective. In 2011 the league moved the
kickoff spot up five yards to the 35-yard line; in consequence, the number of touchbacks
rose to about 44% last season from about 16% the season before the change. The
complete absence of the play, with its high-velocity collisions, only could aid
the league’s effort to reduce concussions and other serious injuries.

Taking
the foot out of football would have other beneficial results. One would be to
eliminate kickers, specialists who fit into the game about as well would Chihuahuas
at a convention of Dobermans. With few exceptions kickers are pale, frail guys
whose lives seem at risk every time they make contact with the big-bodied types
who staff most of the other positions. If not for the money, most probably
would be glad to be elsewhere.

Finally,
by calling the sport “Battleball,” the U.S. could join the rest of the world to
whom “football” means the real game of the foot. That would erase the name
“soccer” (derived from the old term AsSOCiation Football), one of the ugliest
words around.

2 comments:

Mike Levy
said...

I agree completely. Why call it football? It ain't. If they eliminate the extra point, perhaps they'll also consider eliminating the kick off and pass the ball instead. That would take the 'foot' completely out of the game. Let's join the rest of the world in calling the real football, football and whatever American football is whatever the fuck they want.

Battleball... Would probably help take the game global, and make it easier for kids to play without those silly goal posts. And getting rid of "soccer" is worth the added injuries your approach would entail.